London, sleet, 7C
by Tess 4 5
Summary: January. It should be colder. There should be snow. There are too many people out there and public transport is... ah! Let's not talk about it.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the original characters nor the original Inspector Lynley Mysteries – they belong to Elizabeth George and the BBC. I have borrowed the characters from the TV-Show and only own the ideas of _my _stories.

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**Author's note and summary:** January. It should be colder. There should be snow. There are too many people out there and public transport is... ah! Let's not talk about it.

Here are some notes I've found in my scrap book. I've turned them into a short story. Enjoy...

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**London, sleet, 7°C**

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"You miss him, don't you?"

Barbara turned her eyes away from the spot on the wall she had been staring at absentmindedly for the last couple of minutes, tossed her pencil with clear biting marks onto her desk, and glared at Winston. Angry, but with a flushed face.

"Bollocks!" she grumbled. "Of course not."

"Oh, of course you do." Winston laughed.

"No, I don't." she objected. "And I'm still mad with him!"

Their boss, DI Tommy Lynley had been sick at home for two and a half weeks now. After his Christmas and New Year holidays he had been at work for only one week before a very bad cold had smashed him down completely, with sneezes, coughs, shakes and extremely high temperature, so he even had told Barbara via E-mail that she better should not drop by, and he's in the very good hands of one his mother's friends, a nurse.

Barbara would not have asked to come over anyway, because the last thing he had said to her was "You know what? You're the most stubborn woman I know. We should stop this here and continue tomorrow. And please get these files ready for the Chief Super, thank you."

And then he had left the office to run some personal errands.

"And he's grinned!" Barbara suddenly exclaimed. "He's just grinned at me as if..." She waved her hands through the air, looking for the right words. "Ah! As if I were stupid! He doesn't take me seriously! Never! Especially not, when I'm angry! Arrogant idiot..."

* * *

Winston leaned back in his chair and looked at her with a friendly smile.

"What?!" she grunted, glaring at him. "Do you start with it now?"

He had to laugh. "No, Barbara, but you're quite cute, when you're angry."

"I'm... What?!" Barbara frowned. "I'm not cute at all." She sulked.

"Oh, you are. And he thinks it too. It's not at all an arrogant grin he gives you. Not at all."

Inarticulately, Barbara muttered something under her breath and typed something on her keyboard. Furiously so. Winston left it at that and, smugly grinning, returned his attention to his own work until there was silence again. Eventually she had stopped typing, and so he looked up. Barbara was staring at her monitor, but it was obvious that she was not reading anything on it. Eventually she caught his eyes. Her face was frowning, but if he would have to name it, there was pain and hope in her eyes. Winston sighed.

It was a years long story with these two and sometimes he thought that they should be locked into a room together for a while to be forced to sort it out, whatever it was. They would either end up fighting each other to death or snogging into heaven. Winston was sure it would be the latter.

"So, what do you think it is, then?" Barbara asked him now.

He did not miss the light tremble in her voice and inwardly groaned in annoyance. "Pure rapture." he honestly answered, but preferred to keep to himself that he thought that sometimes Lynley actually looked completely lovestoned when he looked at Barbara.

He did not miss her eyes slightly going wide before she shook her head and her frowning deepened.

"Ah, bullshit!" she grunted. With that she ended this topic and kept busy for the rest of the day.

It kept her from overthinking Winston's words. And it kept her from missing her boss too much. It was not only his presence at work, his arguments with her, the bickering, that had turned so affectionate during December, although Barbara believed that it mostly was because Lynley had tried to convince her to accompany him at the boring Christmas and New Year's Eve festivities at Howenstow. She had been there for a few days in fact, and it had been extraordinarily nice, and in no way boring, if she was honest.

She also missed their recently daily lunch dates, their almost daily dinner evenings together, their regular (but not daily!) pint after work, and the cultural event every now and then during the past year. They really had spent a lot of time together and now that he was not here, she really missed him dearly.

* * *

"Did you finish the reports?" Barbara asked while she put on her warm winter clothes at the end of her working day.

"Yep." Winston answered and sighed deeply. "And the briefing files for Lynley."

"Oh, good! He will be pleased. He's longing to have something to read about work."

"I thought as much. They're in the printer. You could bring them to him, if you want." Winston was innocence in person.

"Yeah, I will." Barbara said as casually as she could, and stuffed the papers into a manila folder and the manila folder into a plastic bag. "I wonder how long it will take me to get there. Bloody winter. Have a nice evening, Winnie."

She gave her colleague a smile and nodded. Winston returned her smile and winked. "And you too."

He knew that she knew that both knew that he could as well have sent the briefing files via E-mail.

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It was a cold winter's evening in London, but not cold enough to be nice, with white snow and clear air. The sky was dark and had been grey the entire day. The streets were wet and slushy, and so were the walkways. People were grumpy and a lot of them were out and about in the city, even though the real Christmas bustle was over, now that it was the new year. Barbara hated it. Driving by car was no fun at all at the moment and public transport was stuffed with wet people, who all seemed to be as edgy as she was.

During the past week it had snowed, but now there only was sleet, and rain melted down the few heaps of dirty white stuff that were left over.

This morning on her way to work she had needed more than twenty minutes longer to get there with public transport, and she knew the drive to Belgravia would become similarly extended.

And she was right. When she stood at his door and rang the bell, it had taken her half an hour of extra time to get there, and it had been sleeting constantly, so it was no wonder that she was not in the best of moods when the door opened.

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	2. Chapter 2

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"Barbara!" a happy Inspector welcomed her. "Nice to see you!"

"Hello, Sir! How are you?"

"Now? Distinctively better." Lynley had missed her while he had been at home alone. He gave her a broad smile but then shot a glance into the dark sky from where it poured down. "Come in, you must be freezing!"

"Well, not exactly." Barbara smiled tightly. "It would be nicer if the temperatures would have dropped instead of risen. I'm just wet all over. Shouldn't you be in bed, Sir? I had expected your... umm... nurse to open the door."

"My nurse?" he chuckled. Lynley closed the door behind her. He quickly went past her and onto the carpet in his hall before he turned. He was only in socks. "No, she's just been here in the first week, when I was completely out of order. Believe me, that was more than enough mollycoddling and I'm glad that, without Mrs MacBain, I'm finally allowed to eat more than just cock-a-leekie."

They grinned at each other.

Barbara's boots wetted the tiles near the door while she slipped off her gloves. She tossed them towards the small table under the coat rack next to Lynley. She missed it and he picked them up with a smile.

"You're really wet!" he stated. "Did you come here by foot?"

"Bus and tube. Horrible." She rolled her eyes and removed her woollen cap. Only briefly, she raked a hand through her hair. "Eight minutes alone from the main entrance to the bus station!" she sighed.

"Oh, wow!" he said but did not care about her eight minutes walk. With the lamp in her back, a reddish golden halo of tousled hair framed her face in the nicest of ways. Tommy swallowed.

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"Everybody seemed to have stopped working at the same time." Barbara groaned. "And at the corner to Pratt Walk I stepped onto what looked like a firm surface of dirty snow. It was an ocean of wet water. Ankle deep."

Thinking of her step into the puddle, she crinkled her slightly red nose.

"How inconvenient!" He cleared his throat. "You've been at Lambeth Road today?"

Barbara nodded. A strand of hair fell into her face, that was flushed by the cold, but she only blew it away. Tommy smiled and blinked his eyes nervously. "Unfortunately yes. I had to take the 3 to Parliament Square."

Unlooping the long scarf from her neck she complained that she had to stand in the crowded bus with wet feet. "And of course there was a car incident in the bloody roundabout at Lambeth Bridge. Two French cars. The Gauls should go to driving school before they dare to come over here."

Lynley chuckled and caught the scarf she threw to him. Barbara did not move from the small puddle that was building at her feet on the tiles.

"They should." he agreed, winking at her. Tommy did not move his eyes from her while he put away her scarf.

"It took us about 25 minutes to get to Parliament Square." Barbara bent down to her boots and opened them. Straightening her back again, she panted hard and calmed down for several breaths before she went on. Meanwhile, holding onto the wall to keep her balance, she kicked off the boots and shoved them aside with her socked feet. "Another bloody walk to the tube station, and the rain already had turned into sleet. Mud and puddles. Ah! I guess, all these stupid tourists have learned a few nice curses today."

Lynley laughed out loud. "If they've heard you? Well, then I'm pretty sure of it."

* * *

"I hope you don't mind that I have to get out of my socks, Sir?" She was leaving wet footprints on the tiles. "I don't want to leave them on, or I'll get a cold too. Bloody puddles."

"Oh, I'm fine with it." Lynley made an inviting gesture, but she had started to slip them off anyway. "I can give you some woollen socks if you want."

"That'd be nice." She tossed her socks towards her boots, not caring that they never would get dry there, as balled up as they were. Barbara groaned in annoyance. "Then Westminster Station! It was crammed full of people."

"District line?" he asked and, barefoot, she quickly hopped onto the decidedly warmer carpet where Lynley stood. His face turned soft.

She nodded. "And their mood!" Barbara groaned. "Unbearable. A little bit of balance would suit them all."

"Mhm..." he muttered. Wrinkles of joy had appeared around his eyes. "Maybe some of your Om?"

She grunted nondescriptively. "Stop being sarcastic! That's _my_ job!"

"Sorry." He could not suppress his chuckles.

* * *

"Ah!" she snorted dismissively. "And guess what?" Barbara asked while she opened the zipper on her thick winter coat.

Tommy's eyes followed her fingers. When she had opened it completely, she paused and cocked her head. His eyes found hers again but she did not recognise the light blush on his cheeks. "Not only did I have to stand all the way to Sloane Station - that's normal. But the tour also was prolonged by about 10 minutes or so. Due to those stupid-" She gestured quotation marks into the air. "... _urgent repairings_ at Victoria Station. We stood in the tunnel for several minutes and only went on at a crawl."

She flashed her eyes at Lynley as if the delay had been his fault before she repeated "At a crawl!" she repeated. Then she groaned in annoyance again and turned, so he would be able to help her off with her coat. One day he had started and then always had done it and eventually she had become so used to it that she did not spend a single thought at his behaviour anymore.

"Ta!" she murmured. Of course she had felt his knuckles gently rubbing across her back between her shoulder blades but dismissed it as accidentally. "And then, of course, there was some bloody premiere at the Royal Court Cinema, so there weren't just these - sorry! - daft, stiff arse drivers of Belgravia, but also these f..." Barbara breathed in and out before she went on. "These super-important SUV drivers... Oh, _they_ are safe and sound inside." She brushed off some dirt from her jeans. "But they don't care at all if pedestrians are walking next to the puddles they drive through. Arseholes!" Tommy raised an amused eyebrow at her choice of words. "Yeah, sorry... And they park their giant cruisers where they want with their bloody exception permits. Remind me to call the traffic wardens. Important or not - they're not allowed to park their heavy tanks on the walkways."

"Indeed not." Lynley hung up her wet coat on a hanger, still looking at Barbara. He smiled and only averted his eyes for the few seconds he needed to put away the hanger properly.

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"And could you tell me why they had to turn on the heating to maximum inside the tube?" Barbara asked but did not expect an answer anyway.

He watched her pulling her jumper over her head and fidgeting with its sleeves. "...no idea." Tommy hoarsely answered. Her hair was completely messed up again and her cheeks were rosy.

"Bah... Neither could I. People are wearing winter clothes." she whined. "Weather has turned warmer." Barbara hesitated for a moment, narrowed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief before she slid her arms out of the sleeves. Tommy swallowed again. "And London Transport turns up temperature to eleven of ten. Barmy idiots!"

Lynley nodded. He still smiled and looked at her while she folded her jumper and tossed it onto her scarf, not caring that it had unfolded when it landed there.

"I am _so_ hot!" she complained. Tommy sharply inhaled.

"Can you imagine that?" she asked. He shook his head, his smile rather uncertain.

"It's January, and I'm sweating!" she groaned. He nodded with a lopsided grin and swallowed.

"I should be freezing." Barbara opened the two top buttons of her blouse, fanned herself, and puffed up her cheeks. "But no... they decide to australianise their tube temps. Such a waste of energy! Everybody in there was glowing hot!"

Suddenly she realised that her boss had not said any word at all for the last minutes. Quizzically, she cocked her head and looked straight into his eyes. There was a soft smile in his face but he kept silent. It confused her.

In fact it made her terribly nervous and so she froze.

"What?!" she asked.

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	3. Chapter 3

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He gave her no immediate answer. He only looked at her, smiling brightly.

"What?!" she asked again.

"Mmh... Nothing." Tommy said with a husky voice and shook his head, the smile still on his face. "Just... go on."

"There's nothing else about it. I'm here." Barbara shook her head in disbelief once again and scrutinised the strange expression in her boss' face. "What?!" she asked again. "Why are you staring at me? Is there something weird? Do I have a slush stain in my face? Or are my jeans still dirty?"

Barbara checked her front.

"No, I just..." Tommy cleared his throat. Abruptly, he turned and led the way to the kitchen. "I just watched you undress."

Barbara saw the deep red blush in his nape and suddenly a deep blush crept into her own face. Quickly she followed him but stopped in the doorframe where the floor was carpeted.

"Really?! You've watched me undressing and then ask me to go on?" she asked loudly. She was sure she heard a soft snorting laugh from him. "You arrogant- argh... That's sexist!"

"No..." Tommy opened the door of his fridge and picked two bottles of beer before he turned. He still was blushing but that certain dreamy expression also still was in his eyes. "Actually I watched you ranting and wanted you to go on with _that_." he admitted quietly.

"Oh."

His smile had turned sheepish. Barbara knew that he also had watched her with pleasure how she undressed.

* * *

"Umm..." Barbara did not know what to say. "I... I've finished ranting now..." she muttered. It almost sounded like an apology. She realised that unbuttoning her blouse probably had been just a tad too much.

"What a pity." Tommy murmured and briefly looked at the bottles. Deciding that he would not want to have a drink right now, he shrugged and placed them onto the worktop.

"Huh?" The conversation with Winston came back to her mind. Their eyes locked and she saw more than the usual fondness in them. Finally it dawned on her. "Umm..."

Tommy sighed almost desperately. Then his expression became determined as if he had made a decision. "You look utterly beautiful when you're ranting like that, Barbara." he whispered. Carefully, he dried the palms of his hands on his trousers.

Barbara swallowed.

"I... umm... bollocks..." She did not know what to say. Averting his smitten stare, her eyes fell onto the bottles, so she ignored her naked feet and the cold stone floor, made a step forward and grabbed one.

"Your face was sweetly flushed by the warmth and your chagrin-"

Barbara snorted a brief disbelieving laugh. "My chagrin?"

"Your annoyance about the weather and everything. And your hair is so wonderfully tousled, because you didn't bother to straighten them. It looks... havocked... as if..." Tommy shrugged with a shy grin.

"As if what?" She almost choked on her words. Then her eyes widened in surprise.

He shrugged again, apologising, not saying aloud what she obviously already understood. Quickly she raked a hand through her hair.

* * *

Her eyes narrowed when Tommy made a step forward. He took the bottle off her hand and placed it on the worktop again. "You've looked so angry with the rigours of your trip to my house, the weather, all the people... You know..."

He took her hand and placed a kiss onto her fingers. A shiver went down Barbara's spine.

"Sir, I..."

"You know, there's a cute little crease... Exactly there." Looking at her forehead, Tommy pointed with his chin at said crease. It had appeared again when Barbara had started to frown at him. The gentle smile he still gave her was highly confusing. "Right between your eyebrows. And you always crinkle your nose just a tad when you rail about something. Or when you swear like a trooper."

"Sir!" Barbara objected frowning.

"Or when you're mad at me, that is. Are you mad at me at the moment? Because you crinkle your nose..."

Without taking his eyes from hers he placed a kiss onto the back of her hand.

"Of course not." she croaked. "I just..." Tommy made another small movement towards Barbara. She cleared her throat. "Tommy, I..."

Now his eyes briefly narrowed. The smile on his face widened. She blushed deeper and looked to the ground.

"Please look at me, Barbara."

Nervously, she looked up again. "What's happening here?" she whispered.

"Something unexpected, I'd say. Not unwelcome, but rather about time." He chuckled. "I'd say."

"Aha?" His soft, velvety voice frightened Barbara. Her voice was trembling. "Sir, do you still have the fever?"

* * *

"Yes." His smile turned into an almost cheeky grin. "_You_ give me a temperature. I'm glad that you're here, Barbara, because I've missed you dearly."

"Yah, I've brought the briefing-" Barbara pointed with her head towards the hall where she had left the plastic bag with the manila folder.

"Ah, to hell with the briefing!" Tommy interrupted her harshly. When he gently pulled her another bit closer, Barbara recognised that he had intertwined their fingers. "I haven't missed work. I've missed _you_!"

With his free hand he put some of the errand strands of hair behind her ear, caressed her neck and placed his warm hand onto her shoulder. "Please stop trembling, Barbara."

"I... I can't." she breathed. "This is... Stop being so... Please don't look at me like that, Sir, you're making me nervous."

"Well, in a kitschy film you'd sink into my arms right now."

Barbara straightened her back. "Sir, I could hardly-"

But he cut her short. "Why not? I'd appreciate that." Tommy placed another kiss onto the inner side of her wrist without taking his eyes from hers. Barbara sharply inhaled. "I could as well sink into _your_ arms."

"Sir, we shouldn't..." Barbara tried to object. Her eyes though betrayed her words. Longing, they darted to his lips.

* * *

He could read her mind and obviously thought about the same. "I so want to kiss you, Barbara."

"You _what_?!" Her voice pitched but she did not try to wriggle out of his arms. "Sir, I..."

"Please keep calling me Tommy," Tommy gently pleaded, "and if there's just one good reason why I shouldn't declare my love for you right now, then feel free to tell me."

Her heart raced. He could feel it against his chest. Her face was red. The heat almost warmed his skin. Or was it his own blush? Her eyes were wide. In them, Tommy could see a storm of emotions raging.

"Tommy, I..." Barbara's voice was completely gone now. She could barely whisper.

"Just say yes, because I'm longing to feel your lips on mine." Tommy's face moved a tad closer to hers. "Or simply nod."

Helplessly, Barbara nodded and closed her eyes. Whatever happened here, it felt confusingly perfect, and she finally gave in to the sensation.

Fragments of a second later she felt his lips gently brush hers and a small moan of pleasure escaped her lungs. Another second later he gave her a second kiss and this time it lasted.

They both did not care about the cold stone floor under their feet for quite a while.

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Three hours later she opened a bottle of beer and climbed onto the worktop. Even with thick woollen socks at her feet it was too cold on the floor in the kitchen.

_'If I had known what would happen when I'm only ranting long enough...'_ she thought to herself, pensively watching the label on the beer bottle. "I should have done this a long time ago!" she muttered aloud. With her free hand she pulled more of the cloth from the oversized Eton rugby jersey under her bottom.

"No." Tommy said in the doorway to his kitchen. Barbara jerked and looked up to him. He had been sleeping when she had left him. She had not heard him following her down the stairs. He was leaning against the wood and had his arms crossed in front of his naked chest. His hair was tousled and she knew exactly why. Tommy gave her a broad smile. "Today, it's been exactly the right time and the right place. And I'm very glad that I've finally found the courage to tell you."

"Well..." she answered pensively. "So am I."

They shared a contented smile.

"And now come back to bed." he murmured seductively. Barbara hopped off from the worktop. "And bring the other bottle. Before you exsiccate me completely."

"Tommy Lynley!" she exclaimed with wide eyes and furrowed brows. "You are naughty!"

"Oh, you're so beautiful!" he desperately groaned.

Barbara rolled her eyes and playfully slapped his naked arm when she tried to walk past him with a smug grin. "Stop that!"

Tommy grabbed her hand and pulled her close.

"Oh, yes!" he moaned onto her lips. "Please tell me off!"

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